The album artwork was created by Jonathan Zawada using CGI and AI. Zawada also produced a feature length-film accompanying the album, which was screened in some cinemas. The album has been promoted by the singles "Back In The Game", "This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice", "Gangsters" and "The Spirit", backed by cool videos taken from the Tall Tales film, and a global scavenger hunt.
Back in 2012, when Radiohead played in Sydney, Pritchard was introduced to the band by their touring drummer, Clive Deamer. After Pritchard invited Yorke to collaborate, Yorke sang on "Beautiful People", a single from Pritchard's 2016 album Under the Sun. In 2019, Pritchard remixed "Not the News" from Yorke's album Anima.
So back in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Yorke emailed Pritchard asking him to send him music to work on at home. Pritchard sent around 20 demos, and Yorke began to write lyrics. Later, Yorke began sending demos with his vocals back to Pritchard. They continued to send work back and forth, editing songs down and modifying them. Yorke also played synthesisers, edited tracks and added effects. Pritchard and Yorke never met during the production, instead sending demos and communicating through email and Zoom. Pritchard said he enjoyed working with Yorke, as he provided more than just vocals. But Pritchard wanted to use guitars for some songs, but Yorke declined. Pritchard searched for obscure synthesisers, swapping with friends and using Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio. He used synthesisers including the Korg PS-3300, the Yamaha DX1, a Philips PMC 100, a Roland CR-78, and a Mattel Bee Gees toy rhythm machine.
Now "Tall Tales" has been described as electronic, experimental and ambient. Compared to Anima, the lyrics of Tall Tales are darker and dystopian, the songs discuss themes like "human greed, mendacity, disconnection and the climate crisis". While Pritchard was reluctant to call it a "lockdown record", he conceded themes from 2020 were present within the lyrics. The album title was inspired by George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The album opens with "A Fake in A Fakers World", which is actually a cacophony of percussion that evokes images of rainfall, Pritchard is able to create bring sound to the impossible and bring harmony to noises you never thought could be turned to song. Yorke’s vocals, even when heavily augmented, are wildly discernable. The vocals as well as being purposely vague and conceptual in their imagery are also deliberately drawn out, echoing across nearly 9 minutes of music. It’s disorienting, but in a way that seems to make sense. "Ice Shelf" is a dark, ambient song, next "Bugging Out Again" has a haunting falsetto over a slow keyboard soundscape. Yorke’s echoey tone while beautiful is difficult to understand, almost as though he is singing underwater or in a bubble. Many listeners will likely find themselves listening over and over as I did, trying to make sense of what it is he is trying to say but surprise, it's a track about love. Instead "Back in the Game" is an "electro-goth" song with "mature and declamatory" vocals. "The White Cliffs" is a minimalist and "wintry" song with a basic drum machine pattern, "The Spirit" uses strings and trombone and was likened to Coldplay.
"Gangsters" is a new wave song with electronic rhythms and synthesisers, is lifted right out of an Atari or Spectrum games console. One of the singles released ahead of the album, it gives fans insight into the world Yorke, Pritchard and Zawada have created. "This Conversation is Missing Your Voice" is a more coherent R&B track with syncopated handclaps and a stuttering vocal effect, then "Tall Tales" is a darker song with layered vocoder-processed spoken words that comes towards the end of the album is terrifying to listen to but in a way that makes it impossible to skip or pause. Sinister and foreboding, it opens with the sounds of sirens, much like what you would expect to hear during a period of war or in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse. "Happy Days" which seems to be my favourite track, has a repetitive marching rhythm and "lightly bouncing vocals". And the two last tracks "The Men Who Dance in Stag's Heads" is a "medieval folk ballad" that uses muted drums, tambourine and the harmonium. and then the closing track, "Wandering Genie", is a dark ambient track with the line "I am falling" repeated throughout.
Being able to understand the words across the 12 tracks requires of course multiple replays but as you go over the tracks again, huge themes emerge that help to tie everything together. Criticisms of technology and its precedence in our culture, the threats of climate change, reflections on the pandemic and political events of the last few years, commentary on migration and national borders, concern about capitalism and money are just some of the topics that are being dissected - fans of Yorke and Radiohead’s history of poetic and deep lyrics are guaranteed to be pleased if they give the songs the time they deserve. The most interesting track lyrically though has to be the final track, This is not the kind of music you will hear on the radio, for that simply is not what the project is about. "Tall Tales" is rooted in a passion for exploring the boundaries of sound and holding up a looking glass to what makes of this real music. There are moments that are jarring and dissonant as they play around with harmonies that clash and timings that are wonderfully discordant. There is, however, so much beauty in the noise that this album makes and that paired with the searing subject matter that feels so pertinent and needed today makes this such an important piece of art.
Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard finally are sharing their first full-length project together. The album, is an exploration of the tensions between humanity, self-expression, isolation, AI and ownership. It marries together Yorke’s distinct voice and powerful lyricism with the innovative ideas and capabilities of musical polymath Pritchard to create something that is thought provoking, deeply emotional and at times even profound.
